


pendulum

by orphan_account



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Post-Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 12:52:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4138302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Sansa may have endured the same hardships, but a wolf does not cower when it has been released from its cage. It howls, it bites, it </em>hunts.</p><p>[sansa; post season 5 fix-it? speculation? wishful thinking? book/show au? who knows]</p><p>(incomplete)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. now now

I'm not your mother's favorite dog.  
_ ST. VINCENT _

 

 

 

 

Her hands are bleeding. This is something to focus on, the only thing to focus on as she attempts to orient herself to her surroundings.

Sansa stands, her legs shaking underneath her, and it takes her too long to realize there is still another person to consider. She looks quickly to Theon, groaning and struggling in the snow. He's alive, then, too. His leg is bleeding where it cut against an icicle, like her palms when they scraped hard against the snow.

If her hands are bleeding, it means she survived the fall. She has seen the dead cut open: once their hearts have finished pumping, cuts and wounds do little to alter their appearance. If her hands are bleeding, it means her heart is still beating, weak and traitorous as it is.

An hour ago, she would have almost preferred that it weren't. Now everything has changed.

Surrounding them is only white, only snow and ice and the bodies of dead soldiers. Outside of the walls of Winterfell, they will freeze to death in hours unless they find shelter, fire, food, and Sansa can feel some of that old instinct kicking in, a reflex she had thought long since left her. She had been so very good at surviving King's Landing, even her time with the Boltons. _Even now,_ she had chanted to herself when alone in her locked room, shaking and afraid,  _even now I am surviving_.

She lived then, she will live now. Beaten, used, broken as she is - even now she has her blood running through her veins, the blood of Winterfell. Even now she will live, and she will live better than before. All she needs to do, she knows, is take stock of the situation.

She needs shelter, food, fire, which means she needs to find people; she has only her cloak, only her bloody hands, only Theon, and she doesn't think he will be of so much use to her now. Already he is beginning to fold back into himself, the few crazed moments of courage having passed him, leaving him shivering and frightened. Like a dog just released from captivity, still uncertain of the outside world.

Sansa may have endured the same hardships, but a wolf does not cower when it has been released from its cage. It howls, it bites, it _hunts_.

She will need to be the strong one, for both of them. To think she had once thought him a great warrior, entirely loyal to her brother, devoted to her family's safety. The news of Bran and Rickon being alive does not change much. She still has no idea of how to go about even finding her younger brothers, much less bringing them home, which means even once she and Theon are safe she will need to find someone with the means to begin a search.

She knows of one, and her mind begins to form the name until she shoves it out of her thoughts, as she has since the night of her second wedding. She will not go to him. She would rather brave King's Landing than see his face again, him so genial and accommodating and false and _foolish_. She would not resent his mistakes if it was only _his_ life, _his_ future on the line, but she cannot abide the fact that his errors cost her so dearly.

She has only the clothes on her back, only a broken man at her side, and nothing around that she can see save dead bodies and weapons and horses without masters.

 _Horses,_  she realizes suddenly.  _Weapons_.

Sansa leans down, grabs Theon by the hand, and begins to run, her feet pounding sure and steady against the packed snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how to feel about the show? Obviously I am outraged for my girl Sansa, but since I haven't read the books (though I am planning on doing so) I sort of have to take show-canon as real canon for now. This will probably be mostly show-verse with elements from the books. I have never written anything actually in the universe of asoiaf, so this is kind of an experiment. Hopefully it's not too terrible!!!


	2. death with dignity

What is that song you sing for the dead?  
_ SUFJAN STEVENS _

 

 

 

 

At the edge of the woods, with their journey at last in the safety of foliage and forest rather than the danger of an open field, Sansa finally allows them to stop running, slowing Theon to a brisk walk as she winds them a path through the trees. She stays a few paces ahead of him, listening to his grunts of exertion and his few stumbles as he trips over fallen branches, over swords and shields.

"My lady," she hears him call to her, but she ignores it. He repeats himself, louder this time, but finally falls quiet when she holds a hand up to signal that they must halt.

Directly in their path, almost too far to truly make out, she can see a knight standing over a man sitting back against a tree, his sword raised in the air. Sansa steps lightly behind a tree, hoping that Theon has enough sense to do the same. When she turns back to check, she can see that he has taken a place behind her, crouched down to rip away a piece of cloth from a fallen soldier. This he uses to bind his wound, and Sansa, strangely, almost laughs. His muttered curses from his efforts are so much closer to the Theon she knew, the handsome young man who joked around with Robb and Jon, not the pathetic creature Reek she had been forced to witness in Winterfell.

When Sansa looks again to the knight, she can see the sword fall, the arc of it poised to lop the other man's head from his shoulders. She almost closes her eyes at the sight - _swords and hands and heads on spikes_ \- but the attempt seemingly fails. The knight tries again another time, but still the man's head remains soundly on his shoulders. The angle must be wrong, Sansa thinks, or the sword not sharp enough, or the knight is unused to executions.

Her lord father had always ensured that the angle was right, that the sword was sharp enough, when he performed his duty. Robb had told her so many times. _When a man is executed_ , he told her, _it is important to be sure that it will be fast, that it will create as little pain as possible. It is a man's last right._

_Fast and painless_ , he said. Sansa is not so sure that death is ever quite painless. Why else would people cling to life so desperately?

The knight, now frustrated, kneels in front of the man at the tree, pulling loose a dagger from his armor, and this he finally uses to slit the man's throat. Finally, apparently satisfied at his handiwork, the knight sets away, undoing the reins of a horse tied to a nearby tree and clambering over the steed.

Once the horse is gone, the rider too far away to see, Sansa finally begins their trek again, this time deliberately in the direction of the slain man. She does not know if there is any true reason for it. Perhaps she simply wishes to see the man who was so greatly dishonorable, or maybe disliked, that he required a botched execution rather than a death in battle.

When she finally reaches him, Sansa kneels at his side, watching the blood pour in rivers from the wound in his throat.

"Go check the others," she orders Theon, not turning to see if he will obey. "See if they have anything of any value. If not, take their cloaks and whatever weapons you can carry. And find us a horse, if you can."

For a moment, she wonders if she may need to repeat herself, but he abruptly mutters, "Yes, my lady," and walks off to complete the task.

With that problem resolved, Sansa again turns her attention to the man, reaching out to close his eyes for him. Just as she touches her fingers to his skin, though, his arm suddenly twitches back into life and lands at her shoulder. Sansa nearly screams from the shock of a dead man moving, but as she looks closer she can see that the man isn't quite dead yet, only very close to it.

She drops her touch from his face to his neck, forming a makeshift bandage with both hands to help him through his last moments.

He is not a Bolton soldier, at least, otherwise she would find no comfort to give him. She can see the burning heart sigil on his armor, and she ponders, absently, if he ever saw Stannis Baratheon himself, the man who was supposed to be Winterfell's savior. His army is decimated, as small as it was, and she wonders if he even survived the battle. Her lord father had always claimed Stannis was an accomplished military man, the few times he ever spoke of him, but winter has a habit of turning hardened warriors from the South into sniveling children, sapping them of all strength and knocking them to pieces with nothing more than a few feet of snow, a particularly cruel wind.

"Ser," she murmurs, the anonymous title the only thing she can offer him; she does not even know his name. "It is all right. Everything will turn out all right." A lie, she thinks, but a necessary one, a comfort. A beautiful lie, one that will not harm him, not when he is already this near to death.

He gurgles in an attempt to speak, the red, red blood beginning to bubble out of his mouth. His eyes, so blue, so bright blue, are focused on hers, making her pay attention.

At last, he forces out a single word, meaningless to Sansa, but perhaps not to him.

" _My -_ " he says, but the blood begins to spill from his lips in earnest, and even her hands wrapped around his throat can do little to stop it. She begins to sing, almost absently, until he gives one last violent shudder and twitches and suddenly falls still, the light draining from his eyes. Even after he is gone, she continues the ballad, a song she remembers from when she was a child, from when her lady mother would sit her in front of the mirror and brush and braid her long, red hair. It is about a beautiful lady, a beautiful knight, and in it no one ever dies.

She cannot remember the last time she sang willingly. She thinks she had been in the Vale.

"My lady?" Behind her, Theon speaks softly, hesitantly. "I found us a horse."

Sansa stands, wiping her hands off in a drift of snow a few paces away from the fallen knight in Baratheon armor. At least he was not a Bolton. At least his last sight was not only trees, his last sound not only the whistle of his own blood in his ears. At least he was outside, and the sun, watery and weak as it is, was shining down on him.

Impulsively, she bends down again slightly, and presses a kiss to the man's forehead. When she straightens back up, Theon is watching her warily, as if he is no longer quite sure of what to make of her.

"Let's go," she says.


End file.
